


FUBAR

by belovedmuerto



Series: Keep You Like An Oath [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes learning to live again, Gen, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Steve Needs a Hug, but it will get better, except not, soulmates!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:47:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He rubs at the ache in his chest, the constant unrelenting reminder that his soulmate is dead and gone and that he's not buried there next to him (not that there's a body in Bucky's grave, mind you). He doesn't feel entirely comfortable with modern slang yet, but in this case it fits: everything sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FUBAR

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to Moonblossom for the beta duties and the encouragement! 
> 
> This is probably best read after Part 1 of the series! And the whole thing will probably feel much more complete when I've posted the next and last parts! BUT! The next part is just about finished being written, and then I'll get started on the last part, which is already at least somewhat planned out! So hopefully I won't take too long!

One of the things Steve had learned in his "acclimating to the 21st century" classes was that soulmates are more common now than in the past. They talk about a lot of other things, technology and the internet and modern politics and things Steve knows he’s supposed to care about, be interested in, but he gets stuck on the sheer ridiculousness of the thought that just because people are more connected these days means that there are more soulmates now than there were when he was growing up. It was called a rare occurrence when he was young, having a soulmate, finding that person who feels that weird, special kind of right, but even as a kid he hadn’t quite believed that it was _that_ rare.

No, he thinks. It's just that it's no longer illegal to be queer. It’s that people accept that there are platonic soulmates now. It’s that people are at least a little bit more accepting of each other. A little bit. If there’s more than a tinge of bitterness to his thoughts at that particular moment, well, no one would blame him. He tries to shake his head and clear it, but all he can see for a few moments is Bucky. Bucky, smiling at him, clapping him on the shoulder. Bucky, holding him tight and telling him that he’s with Steve til the end of the line, that he’s Steve’s. Bucky, falling from the train. 

He rubs at the ache in his chest, the constant unrelenting reminder that his soulmate is dead and gone and that he's not buried there next to him (not that there's a body in Bucky's grave, mind you). He doesn't feel entirely comfortable with modern slang yet, but in this case it fits: everything sucks.

\----

Sam comes to his room in the hospital late the next morning, arriving with his infectious grin and a couple of bags that smell like--

"Did you bring me falafel?" Steve asks, finding his first smile in days.

Sam keeps grinning at him, and Steve makes unabashed grabby hands. He’s starving, they haven’t been giving him nearly enough food; clearly the hospital has no concept of feeding a super soldier (and why would they, honestly). There’s one nurse who gave him the granola bars out of her own lunch, but he hasn’t seen her since the previous afternoon. They keep telling him he has to be careful of his healing abdominal wounds, but again: not used to dealing with a super-soldier. He’s already more healed than not, although he can feel that it’s going to be a few more days before he’s back in fighting form. Or in much more than “sitting around” form, anyway. Which is not where he needs to be, but he’s not a miracle worker.

"Is it from Amsterdam?!" he asks, instead of dwelling (for now. A distraction).

It was Natasha who'd first taken him to the falafel place, and Steve loves it. She gives up secrets rarely if at all, but it’s not as though this place is unknown throughout DC. Steve has been known to go out of his way just to stop at the one closest to his apartment.

His apartment. The one with the big hole in the wall now. And the blood probably still on the floor. He does not want to think about that.

Sam starts handing him food before taking his seat at Steve's side. He gives Steve three times as much as he keeps for himself. In just a few short days, he’s already gotten a good idea of what it takes to keep Steve fed. 

"I think they're gonna spring you today. How're the stitches?"

"They're fine," Steve replies around a mouthful of food, grimacing at the question. "I'm fine."

He hates being in the hospital. Too many memories of being delirious as a child, too many memories of his mother’s prayers over his prone form, of Bucky begging him in the dark to get better, not to go.

He's halfway through his third helping when he remembers his late-night visitor, when he remembers that he didn’t dream that. But he still finishes eating before he speaks up.

“Bucky was here last night,” he says, as casual as he can manage. He glances at the corner where Bucky had been standing, and then at the ugly art print at the end of the bed. Nope. Still ugly.

Sam stares at him for a minute before pointedly swallowing and putting down his food. “Bucky was here. In your hospital room. In your _guarded_ hospital room.”

Steve shrugs. He doesn’t remember feeling any fear of Bucky, despite their last meeting. He only remembers the warm contentment of Bucky claiming him, of knowing that he at least remembers that much, that he at least recognizes it even if he doesn’t really remember it, that Steve is his soulmate. Nothing else matters to Steve, as long as Bucky knows that Steve is his and he’s Steve’s. He can handle anything else Bucky can throw at him; he can handle it if Bucky never remembers anything, as long as they have each other.

Sam watches him for a moment, and runs his hands over his face. He picks up his food and takes another bite, chews and swallows before speaking. “This is going to be messy, Steve.”

Steve shrugs again. “Probably. But I can’t leave him, Sam. I can’t let him go without fighting for him.”

“I know. I get it, man. He’s your soulmate. That’s not the sort of thing you can just walk away from.”

\----

The first thing he does, after leaving the mission on the riverbank, is find clothes. 

Well, the first thing he does is pop his shoulder back into its socket. That taken care of, he sets about finding clothes. He is used to stealth, and he is not dressed for stealth. He is dressed for war. 

He doesn’t know how he knows that he’s used to stealth, but he knows it, viscerally, the way he knows that he breathes and that his heart beats. He has become a blunt instrument, but it wasn’t always this way. Before he was a ghost story, he was actually a ghost. He thinks maybe he used to be proud of that, of being a ghost, but he’s not sure if that’s real or not. (What he was before that, before being a ghost, he’s unsure about. Hopefully he’ll be able to figure that out sooner rather than later.)

Everyone is moving towards the river, towards the Triskelion’s smoking ruins and the helicarrier wrecks, so he walks in the opposite direction. A jacket is easy to come by, and he discards his armor, keeps the knives, covers the arm and pulls a hood over his head. 

The body has needs that must be met. He knows this, though he doesn’t know how he knows it. There are many things in his head that he doesn’t know the origin of. ( _Steve_ echoes back and forth between his ears, and he doesn’t understand the fierce possessiveness it engenders, but it’s there, and strangely comforting, along with the ache that lodges itself in his chest.)

There are a number of safe houses scattered throughout the District, not including the bank vault where he was wiped and stored when in town. He starts with surveillance, but the fall of the helicarriers and the destruction of SHIELD seems to be occupying everyone in the city who isn’t himself, and no one is watching any of them.

He takes his time raiding each and every one, over the course of a few days, with only a short sojourn to the hospital to check on the mission, to _claim him_. He’s not sure why he does that, why he risks capture so blatantly, but the soft smile on the Captain’s face as he mumbles at him is enough to reassure him, enough to let him know that he’s on the right track.

He takes the things he thinks he’ll need; money mostly, various weaponry (knives, a couple of guns and ammunition. The sniper rifle he leaves behind with more than a twinge of sadness. He can always come back for it, if necessary. Or check one of the safe houses further out), some food and clothes. He takes the time in one of the older houses to take a shower, savoring the heat of it, and the feeling of being clean afterwards. He savors knowing he no longer smells of the polluted water of the Potomac. He ties his hair back so it’s out of his face, and he pulls the hood of the sweatshirt he puts on over his head, and he goes out and steals a car. 

He drives out of the city on Georgia Avenue amidst afternoon traffic. He meanders into Maryland, seemingly at random, and eventually ends up outside of Thurmont, renting a room for a week in a little motel just off of the road. It’s anonymous and far enough away that he feels like there aren’t eyes on him constantly.

The young man behind the counter when he checks in looks at him with wide eyes when he pays in cash and makes a noise of surprise.

“What’d you do, knock over a 7-11 or something?” the kid asks, and for a minute he thinks he’s been made, that he’ll have to eliminate this person and keep going, leave the state, end up further away from the mission; he doesn’t want that. It strikes him, that he wants something. He doesn’t remember experiencing want. 

A breath away from snapping the clerk’s neck, he realizes this is a joke. This is a joking expression of surprise at being paid in cash, and he smiles instead. He’s not sure if the smile comes off charming or perhaps something a little closer to intimidating, because the kid is still staring at him.

“Something like that,” he manages.

The kid shrugs and takes the cash, handing him the key to his room.

Humor is a way to deflect attention. He’ll have to remember that. 

He’s pretty sure he already knew that.

He wasn’t always a blunt instrument. Once upon a time he was used for longer missions, more delicate, missions that required stealth and subtlety, not just bullets and knives. Once upon a time he was a ghost. Once upon a time, he was an operative.

Once upon a time he was a person. He’s almost sure of it.

\----

Most of the rest of that day is a bunch of hurry up and wait. They tell Steve that he will be discharged, but they don’t say when. They bring him lunch, eventually, and Steve eats it, even though it’s terrible hospital food and he doesn’t want it and it’s not nearly enough food to actually sate him.

“Can we go out for steak or something tonight?” he asks around a mouthful of bland chicken sandwich.

Sam shrugs. “Sure. We’re on your schedule, Steve.”

Steve nods. Steak first, and then Bucky. 

Most of the afternoon is spent with Sam trying to find various ways of distracting Steve from his impatience. Despite his itch to get out, out of the hospital, out there looking for Bucky, despite the way he can feel the ache of needing to find him again in his chest, wrapped tight around his heart, Steve has at least enough presence of mind to appreciate what Sam’s doing.

Eventually, Sam lands on the tattoo he can see the outline of through the thin material of Steve’s hospital gown. He taps his own chest, over his heart, and says, “What’s the ink?”

Steve grimaces a little, but he tugs on the neck of the gown until the top of the tattoo is revealed. He figures Sam can gather what it is from that. It’s bright red and blue with a heavy black outline, the cord that is pulled tight around the heart a combination of yellow and grey that looks silver to Steve’s eyes.

He shrugs. 

“A heart?” Sam questions, looking at it closely. His eyes flick up to Steve’s, and Steve nods.

“It took a few tries to get it to stick,” Steve admits. “And some help from Tony and Bruce. They developed a new ink for it.”

Sam chuckles. “Now there’s a niche market. Tattoo ink for super soldiers.”

Steve smiles. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Why that?” Sam ventures, perhaps sensing that Steve is at least open to talking about it, at least right now, while he’s stuck in the hospital.

Maybe Steve just wants to tell someone. He’s already told Sam so much of everything else. Sam seems to understand him better than anyone else in the 21st century. Well, him and Natasha (and it was a surprise that Natasha gets him, though now that he knows it, knows her a little bit better, he’s not sure why it was so surprising).

“It was something I started drawing, after Bucky went to Europe,” Steve admits. “It just felt like I was all tied up, tied to him. When I woke up, it still felt the same, even though I thought--knew-- he was gone. So I decided to make it permanent. A reminder, I guess.”

Steve shrugs and looks at his hands in his lap, blushing a little bit.

“That’s nice, man,” Sam says. When Steve looks up at him, he’s smiling, and Steve manages to smile back, a little bit.

\----

When he sleeps, his memories rewrite themselves.

He doesn’t like to sleep, but the body requires it. Some of the things in his head, all jumbled and confused, tell him that most bodies require far more sleep than this one he possesses does, but he’s not sure he can trust that.

He cannot trust most of what’s in his head, he thinks. It is a dangerous place to be. They told him that over and over again, that he was a danger to himself, when he wasn’t on mission. They told him that as they pumped insidious things into his veins, made him sleep, made him cold.

He didn’t have memories, in the frozen sleep.

When he sleeps, his brain shows him things. He sees himself with the Captain, except it’s not quite him. Not quite the man he almost killed. And he is not quite as he is now, either. He’s not sure if these images are memory or fantasy. When he allows himself to think on it, to remember the images during his waking hours, he thinks it’s perhaps a little bit of both, memory mixed with fantasy, and he cannot trust any of it, he doesn’t dare.

Some of the things his brain shows him must be fantasy. He knows he stopped hitting the Captain, before he fell from the helicarrier, but he sees what would have happened if he hadn’t. The image stays in his head when he wakes, though he tries to banish it, and his face is wet. He is crying.

He sees other things too, far worse things, far better things.

He doesn’t like to sleep. When he sleeps, his memories rewrite themselves.

\----

Sam drives him home, when they finally release Steve, with a sheaf of paperwork detailing the things he’s supposed to do to take care of himself and strict instructions not to run off and save the world again for at least two weeks.

“Seriously, call Iron Man or something,” the doctor says, with a wry smile. “He can’t possibly do anymore damage to DC than has already been done.”

Sam laughs and shakes the doctor’s hand.

“You sure you want steak?” Sam asks, when they’re inching up Conn Ave towards DuPont Circle and Steve’s apartment.

He can’t think of it as home. It’s never been home. Home is two hundred miles north.

Steve shrugs. Now that he’s been released, he just wants to sleep. He wants to be away from people for a little bit. He needs to regroup and start planning, but for just one night he wants to do nothing at all.

“We can go to Amsterdam again,” Sam continues. He’s tapping on the steering wheel to the beat of the music on the radio. “Did you know, I went to the one closest to your place earlier, and when I started ordering, they just asked me if it was for Steve and then they cut me off and told me they’d do the usual and gave it all to me for free?”

“Really?” Steve will have to go in and pay for it, later. They always try to give him his food for free. It doesn’t feel right.

He goes to that Falafelshop fairly often.

“Yeah, man. They know your usual. And they’d heard you were in the hospital, wanted to do something nice.”

Steve blushes. They probably won’t let him pay, but he should at least go thank them.

“We could go to Shake Shack instead,” Sam continues. “There’s one on 18th or 19th, isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Right on Connecticut, I think. That works. A burger works.”

Sam snorts. “Or like, five.”

\----

So paying for everything with cash makes him more noticeable; he needs to do something about that. He drives east in the morning, all the way into Baltimore, where he goes to several different stores and converts most of his cash into various pre-paid credit cards. After that, he buys a small computer and a pre-paid smartphone. 

He feels more inconspicuous without all that cash. And he feels more prepared with the computer and the phone. 

After making his purchases, he stops and eats some lunch near the over-crowded tourist trap of the Inner Harbor. The food is greasy but good, and the cannoli he picks up from the Italian bakery he passes is amazing.

He really likes cannolis.

There is a safe-house in Baltimore, and he takes a meandering walk in its direction, enjoying the afternoon sun and the anonymity of being in a city that isn’t searching for him. The safe-house appears not to be under surveillance, and no one is around, so he lets himself in, and gathers more cash, a bit of ammunition, and the sniper rifle that had helpfully been left there. It’s in its own case, broken down and inconspicuous, and he straps it to his back. It looks like a normal backpack; he looks like a student, almost. Perhaps a little bit on the older side for it, but if he carries the left arm like a prosthetic instead of a weapon, instead of part of him, it becomes that much more believable. A recently returned veteran, using the resources available to him to go back to school. There are a number of colleges in Baltimore, he could go to any of them.

There’s even an art school in Baltimore, and that sticks with him, for some reason. It reminds him of the mission, of the Captain, of _Steve_ , and he doesn’t know why.

After he’s shaken off the confusion of those seemingly random feelings (he suspects they aren’t random at all, but he doesn’t trust the things his brain wants to whisper to him about them, about _Steve_ , about the mission, so he doesn’t listen, he doesn’t listen, he ignores the thoughts), he discovers that there’s also a set of clean license plates, Maryland tags, and he takes those as well. 

He walks back to where he’d parked the car, wipes it down, and leaves the keys in the ignition. Someone else can have it. Or report it. Or whatever, he doesn’t care. He walks away.

It’s easy enough to steal another car, and he drives out of Baltimore, back towards his motel and solitude. 

He’s exhausted.

\----

Steve mostly stares out the window of Sam’s car on the drive to his apartment. Part of him feels like, after he’s lived there for as long as he has, he should think of it as home, but he doesn’t. It’s just an apartment. Just a place. Just a place that he didn’t choose, that he didn’t even decorate. SHIELD did it all, picked it all for him. A nice apartment, sure, in a nice part of town. There are lots of amenities nearby. The Metro stop is only a couple of blocks away. The Shake Shack is also only a couple of blocks away (which Sam mentions on the drive, in a voice of jealousy, more than once). 

It’s not home, though.

Sam must have some kind of parking mojo, because he finds a parking spot right outside Steve’s building almost immediately. Steve mentions it, trying to joke, trying to feel some kind of lightness, and Sam just grins at him. Steve is almost able to smile back, but he’s aching now, with hunger and loneliness, and the need to be out there, looking for Bucky. Even though he knows it’s pretty much fruitless, he can feel that Bucky’s nearby, and he _needs_ to be out there, looking. He needs it more than he needs sleep, or at least it feels that way. He knows he needs to rest; he needs that one single night of nothing he’d promised himself. It’s not selfish to wait ten hours before getting started. It’s not.

Sam gently steers Steve in the direction of the hamburger place, and Steve lets himself be led.

Steve feels like driftwood, tossed around by the tides, no direction of his own (the only direction he wants to be headed in is _towards his soulmate_ ). It feels nice to let someone push him towards something, even if that something is only hamburgers.

He is pretty hungry, now that he thinks about it.

He can feel that Bucky is somewhere. Nearby. Ish. At least he hasn’t gone too far, Steve decides. That’s a good sign. It has to be. 

His chest aches.

He wants to go after Bucky, even though, even though. He wants to find him, even though he has no idea what state Bucky’s in. Sam has cautioned him on trying to track down Bucky before he’s ready to be found, and logically, rationally Steve knows it’s good advice, but he doesn’t feel particularly rational or logical right now.

He’s never been rational _or_ logical when it comes to Bucky. He’s accepted that about himself. Accepted it long before he jumped out of a plane and walked into a HYDRA base just to find one man.

He wants Bucky back at his side with a desperation that shakes him to his core. He wants Bucky back, back at his side. He wants to be his again, and he wants Bucky to be his again. No matter what. 

He knows that Bucky will be different. There’s no way either of them can be the same they were when they were kids.

But they’re still soulmates. He can still feel it. He knows that they’re still connected, and that’s what’s important.

Still, Steve is being tossed around right now, by Bucky’s distance, by his own body. And he’s so tired. And Bucky doesn’t seem to feel the same urgency as he does, because other than that appearance in his hospital room, Steve hasn’t heard from him.

He aches with missing him.

Sam keeps looking at him sideways, but he doesn’t pry. He doesn’t push, and Steve is grateful for that. Sam is a good friend.

They munch their way through dinner mostly in companionable silence. Sam talks some, he has that gift for being able to fill a silence in an easy way, that doesn’t raise Steve’s hackles, and doesn’t require his own response. It’s nice. Soothing. Mostly, Sam watches him eat with wide eyes. Steve only eats three burgers and a milkshake and a large fries. He shrugs at Sam’s expression.

Honestly, if it weren’t for how adrift and on edge he feels, he could probably eat more.

They walk back to Steve’s place in the twilight. Sam seems content not to talk anymore, and Steve is ever more grateful for the quiet. He follows Steve up the stairs and down the hall and into his apartment, and Steve doesn’t quite understand why until he steps into his living room and sees the mess. It’s obvious that someone tried to clean up, but they didn’t do a very good job. He sees the bloodstain on the floor, and the goddamn _hole_ in the wall where Bucky--the Winter Soldier--Bucky shot Nick Fury _through the wall_. Steve shudders and turns to Sam, who’s just watching him.

“Hey, Sam--”

“Yeah man, go pack a bag.”

Steve will be forever grateful that Sam didn’t make him actually ask.

\----

He spends three days in the bathtub in his motel room, the sniper rifle propped up in the corner. Loaded, of course. He has a pillow and the quilt off the bed, but he’s still cold.

He’s still cold, and he’s still not sure if anything is actually real. He has no way of telling, and he keeps telling himself that he’s awake and alive and it really is the 21st century--which feels like it should feel weirder than it does--but he’s not sure he believes himself.

When he has to, he’s able to force himself out of the tub, but mostly he just stays there, curled on his left side, alternating between watching the bathroom door and sleeping.

He hates how much he’s sleeping, how his memories continually rearrange themselves, how they rewrite themselves, but he cannot stop himself from slipping under, time and again.

He’s cold, and sore. Everything aches, everything is pain, and he should be used to it, he knows (he doesn’t know how he knows), but the aching in his chest is the worst. 

And no one is coming for him. No one. No one. _Where is Steve?_ He keeps thinking it but he doesn’t know how to answer that question, and he doesn’t know how to find him again, even though he feels the need for it, the desperate need to find the mission, to cleave to him, to be with him, to be his.

His handlers are not coming for him. It is a relief, even though it means there’s no one to make him stop hurting. No one to take all the memories back out of his head so they’ll stop assaulting him. No one to maintain the arm. No one to keep him from figuring out how to find _Steve_ and then going out and doing it.

Good.

He has to maintain a low profile, but they do not seem to be looking for him.

He thinks they will be, once he starts looking for them.

He is not safe, not by a long shot, but it seems like he’s in no more danger than if he were on long-term assignment. He doesn’t think he’s been on long-term assignment in many years. It’s been a long time since he was trusted with such a mission. It’s been a long time since he was considered more than a blunt instrument.

The Russians had used him on longer assignments. They’d been proud of him. They hadn’t frozen him over-much. He’d trained many other operatives. He’d been proud of that.

Hydra hadn’t had the same uses for him.

He knows he is capable of subtlety. He has avoided detection thus far in his new mission, hasn’t he?

\----

There’s still that picture of Sam and Riley on Sam’s table, when they get there. 

“I’ll set the spare bed up for you,” Sam says, walking down the hall to the bedrooms. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“Thanks,” Steve replies. He sets his duffle bag down, and sits at the table, looking at the photo of Sam and Riley in their rigs.

He doesn’t have any pictures of him and Bucky. He used to, back before the ice, just a couple, but they’re all in museums now, and he’s not sure they’d actually give them back, even if he were to pluck up the courage to ask.

Sam comes back a few minutes later, and goes into the kitchen. “You want anything to drink, Steve? Or you just wanna bunk down? You still need rest, you know? And honestly, you look like shit, man.”

Steve chuckles a bit, because he’s pretty sure it’s true, he does look like shit. He kind of feels like shit, too. 

“Water would be great, thanks,” he says. “Hey Sam, was Riley--” and he cuts himself off, because it’s rude and invasive to ask Sam if his dead wingman was also his soulmate. He blushes; Sam’s his friend, this is none of his business. He has no right to ask that.

Sam comes out of the kitchen with two glasses of water and a gentle, understanding look on his face.

“Nah, man,” he says, answering the question Steve hadn’t finished. He sits down across from Steve. “My soulmate’s platonic, actually. Known her since I was three. I loved him, though, like he was.”

“Oh,” Steve replies, faintly. There used to be almost as much discrimination against platonic soulmates as there was against queer soulmates. Not real, they were called. Defective, unable to properly love the person their soul matched them with. It was awful. They didn’t tend to disappear quite as much, but they suffered a lot.

“It’d be weird if we weren’t platonic, really,” Sam goes on. “She’s ace and we’re related. It would be hard.”

“Related?”

“Yeah, she’s my cousin.”

“Oh,” Steve says again.

“So you and Bucky, not platonic, huh?”

“No,” Steve says, after a minute. “We never-- But no, not platonic.” He chuckles, but it’s not a happy sound.

“We’ll figure it out, Steve.”

Steve nods. They sip their water in silence, for a few minutes. 

“Does it hurt when you’re away from her?” Steve asks, eventually, staring at his fingers around the glass.

Sam shakes his head. “No, not really. But we talk pretty much every day, see each other a couple of times a week, or at least once a month. I felt it when I was overseas a bit more. Why? Do you?”

“Since the day he left for the war, pretty much,” Steve replies.

“Jesus, Steve.”

Steve chuckles again, but it’s no happier than before. “It only got bigger, after the serum. Like I had more room to miss him, to need him. It only went away when I found him in Austria, and for a while I was the happiest goddamn guy in Europe, because at least we were together, and I could take care of him a little, like he always took care of me. Things weren’t perfect, he was hurting and he never did tell me what they did to him at Azzano, but at least we were together.”

Steve takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “And then he fell, and it was so much worse.”

Sam is looking at him steadily, sadly. Letting him get this out, for the first time ever. 

“I was okay with putting the plane down, because he was already gone, and I’d been terrified my whole life of ending up fading away like my ma did after my dad died.”

Steve tries to smile, but it doesn’t even feel like it works. It feels painful on his face. “And then I woke up, and it still hurt. So I got used to it.

“I never even though it might mean he was still out there.” Steve feels the crushing guilt of it even more than he feels the ache of Bucky’s absence. 

\----

There’s a knocking at the door of his room sometime in the evening of the third (maybe?) day, and he lifts his head to look towards it.

The last rays of sunlight filter through the blinds, and the knocking goes on, gentle but insistent. 

He sits up, grabbing the sniper rifle and pulling the quilt around his shoulders.

“Mr Smith? Are you here?” he hears, through the door.

He gets out of the tub and shuffles to the door, checking to make sure the arm is covered, make sure the rifle is hidden from sight, and making sure the chain is still there on the door, still providing that tiny extra touch of security before he cracks it open. 

Not that the chain would stop a STRIKE team (if HYDRA can even muster one right now), but the rifle and his arm would.

But then he’d have to leave, and he’s not ready for that. He doesn’t think he can go any further away-- the ache in his chest protests even this distance from the one who is his-- and he’s certainly not ready to go back to DC and find the mission-- the Captain-- _Steve_.

He’s pretty sure he’ll have to go further, before he goes back, but he doesn’t want to think about that right now.

The same clerk who’d checked him in several days ago is standing outside.

“Um, hi,” the young man says.

(He wonders if he was ever that young. He must have been, once, but it doesn’t feel like it.)

He nods at the kid, tugging the quilt tighter around his shoulders.

“Hey man, you all right?” the kid asks.

He shrugs. “Sick,” he allows, and then gestures at his head with his right hand. “Head thing. Cold.”

“Man, that sucks,” the kid replies, sympathizing. “Listen, I had to be like a hardass or whatever, but this is your last night. If you want, I can put you down for a few more. Just, you gotta stop over and pay before morning. Doreen gets on my ass if I don’t make people pay up front, yanno?”

He nods again. Has it really been a week already? How long has he been in the tub? It must’ve been longer than he’d thought.

Come to think of it, his head actually feels clearer. Things feel a little more real, a little sharper around the edges, like they’re actually happening. Like his memories have almost finished rewriting themselves, have almost settled.

“By when?” he asks.

“I’m off at six in the morning, so whenever before then,” the kid answers, clearly relieved. “How many days you want? Like, three, four?”

“A week?”

“OK, cool, man. See you later. Hope you feel better.”

“Thanks.”

The kid waves at him and jogs back towards the reception office.

He-- James? Bucky?-- shuffles across the room again. He props the rifle up next to the bed and crawls into it, instead of back to the tub. It’s too soft, but it’ll do. He pulls the leftover pillow over and under his head, and he cocoons himself in the quilt, and he tells himself to wake up before six. Within moments, he’s asleep again.

When he wakes up again, the clock on the table next to the bed says it’s 5:15. It’s still dark out, the only light coming through the window from the spotlight in the parking lot. He unwraps himself from his quilt cocoon and runs his hands through his greasy hair.

Maybe he’ll try to shower today.

He pulls on a hoodie and his boots, not bothering to tie them, digs out enough cash to pay for another week, and shuffles across the lot to the reception office.

The kid smiles at him when he comes in, squinting at the brightness, even though he knows it’s really not very bright in here.

“Hey, thanks for coming over,” the clerk says. “I know you must feel like shit.”

He shrugs and then lets a rueful smile cross his face. His voice comes out rough, which only lends credence to his head cold story. “I look that bad, huh?”

The kid makes a face and nods.

He shrugs again. “It’ll pass in a couple more days. How much do I owe you?”

The kids quotes him a price, lower than last week, and he supposes there’s some sort of long-term discount, forks over the cash.

“Oh, here,” the kid says, after giving him his change. “You got any soda? It might help if your stomach’s upset. Hang on.”

He ducks into the back room and comes back a moment later with a can of Coca Cola and one of ginger ale.

“Here,” he says, handing them over.

He takes them, and stares at them for a minute. Is this a test? Is there punishment forthcoming?

No, because this kid is clearly not HYDRA.

No, because he’s certain no one is looking for him except Steve, right now. 

Mostly certain, anyway.

This is kindness.

“Thanks,” he manages, before he shuffles back to his room.

He does a full sweep of the room before he sits down on the bed and cracks open the red can of soda.

The kid was right. It does make his stomach feel better.

\----

It feels like Sam is waiting on him. Waiting for him to make some big proclamation. Waiting on him to detail his plan for finding Bucky. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Trouble is, Steve has no plan. He has no idea what to do. None whatsoever. He’s never gone looking for his soulmate before. He’s never needed to. Either Bucky was right there, at his side, in the thick of it, or he was somewhere in Europe, unreachable, where Steve had no hope of getting to him pre-serum, and no chance after; or else Steve thought he was dead. Steve was so certain he was dead. No one could have survived that fall. No one who didn’t have the serum, or something close to it.

That’s what Steve had thought, anyway. And he hates thinking about it now, now he knows something of what Bucky had been put through, subjected to. He doesn’t think for a second that the file Natasha had given him is complete, not for a single second. But it haunts him, nonetheless, the horrible things that they’d done to Bucky, the even more horrible things that he can imagine, that aren’t in the file.

Sam is encouraging, the first few days.

“You’ll figure it out,” he says. He claps Steve on the shoulder, an understanding smile on his face.

After that, he’s sort of sympathetically amused. Steve is nearly paralyzed with worry for Bucky, and with his own indecision.

But there’s no telling where Bucky could be. He’s probably not even on the same continent anymore. Everything Steve knows about the Winter Soldier, the world’s foremost assassin, tells him that Bucky won’t be found until he’s good and ready.

He could be out there anywhere. And Steve has no idea if he’s got food or a place to sleep, or any real way to defend himself from HYDRA, if they find him first.

Steve is terrified, and it’s a familiar feeling. He’s been terrified his whole life. What if he doesn’t find Bucky in time? What if they find him first? What if Bucky’s left feeling like Steve doesn’t care enough to find him first?

\----

HYDRA doesn’t find him first. He finds them.

Well, a small cell, anyway. Outside of Frederick, Maryland, of all places.

It’s a bracing way to spend an evening; it makes him feel almost like a good person, one of the good guys.

He’s pretty sure he’s not, though. Not one of the good guys.

He doesn’t know if he ever will be.

But his--Steve. The Captain. His mission deserves that he at least try, right?

\----

“I’m worried about him,” Steve confesses.

“I know you are, Steve. He can probably take care of himself though, yanno? If he couldn’t, at the very least DC police would’ve picked him up. So he’s probably good, for now at least. And you know Nat has ears everywhere. If he pings something, she’ll hear about it. And we’ll be there. But you need to try and take care of yourself as well, Steve.”

Steve nods. “I know. I know I do.”

Sam agrees. “So let’s make sure you’re taking care of you, too. All right?”

Steve nods again. After a moment, he looks up with a wry smile. “Nat says she doesn’t know everything, but I’m pretty sure she’s omniscient.”

“Probably,” Sam agrees. It’s a familiar sentiment, between them. 

“I want to-- I don’t know. Do something. Try and let him know I’m looking for him. Or at least that I’m waiting. I don’t want to pressure him, but I want him to know.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Sam says.

“It’s somewhere to start, at least.” Steve replies. “It’s like, I can feel him sometimes. Just a little, like he’s just out of my peripheral vision.”

“Yeah, that happens with soulmates. I can almost always tell when my cousin’s upset or happy or whatever.”

Steve nods. “I think I’m going to go back to my place this afternoon.”

“OK. Do you want some company?”

“No, I think I’ll do it on my own.”

“All right, man. But call me if you need me.”

\----

He has research to do. Intelligence to gather. That’s how he’s thinking of it, anyway. He’s been putting it off. Rather, he’s been hiding in the tub from it, only able to force himself out to do other things. Things that don’t involve the computer, that don’t involve searching for information on his mission, on himself, on his former self.

But going over to reception had jerked him out of it, out of his stupor. He’s had enough of sleep, for a little while, enough of his memories rearranging themselves in his head. 

Now it’s time to get some work done.

The motel has free wifi as well as free HBO (he has only the vaguest idea what that is), so he turns on the little tv and flips around until he finds something inoffensive to have on, as noise.

He feels like he likes having some background noise, while he goes about his mission. Like he used to do this, back before. Back when Steve was different, back when he was Bucky. He doesn’t remember there being picture, though.

Cartoons, though. He has vague recollections of there being cartoons before films, and of telling his best friend he should do that, should get into animation. He remembers--thinks he remembers. It was a different version of his mission, a different version of him. 

They were both so different; it’s confusing, seeing the things in his head, the images of who he was, the images of who the mission was, laid over the way they are now. The way Steve had looked, when he’d been on the helicarrier, and for a moment all he’d seen was a skinny kid wiping blood from his lip and claiming he’d had them on the ropes, he’d had _him_ on the ropes.

It was confusing, and terrifying. It is still confusing and terrifying, when he thinks on it now. 

So he doesn’t. He cannot think of that right now, because he needs to know more.

He is trepidatious, as he slowly types the word ‘soulmate’ into the Google search box.

There is a wealth of information regarding soulmates available, everything from scientific enquiries and studies (interesting, somewhat confusing, not particularly helpful to him at this very moment) to a lot of oddly-worded worshipful personal accounts, longing for something not experienced or only imagined or lost.

He gets lost clicking around on wikipedia for a while, reading about the supposed psychic abilities shared by soulmates, and the studies that have been done by the Xavier Institute on soulmates who are also mutants (as well as soulmates where one or the other party is a mutant). 

Apparently, they can sometimes share powers. 

Interesting, but irrelevant.

The part about soulmates having a sense of each other at all times is more relevant, though, and he spends an indeterminate number of minutes, or perhaps hours, thinking about this and remembering. 

He’s pretty sure he remembers that he’d always known when Steve was in trouble, always known when he was upset.

He thinks. It’s possible it was always wishful thinking on his part, but there’s enough evidence sitting on his computer screen in front of him to tell him that what he’d always thought was true actually was true, and enough fairly solid memories or bits thereof in his head to say that yes, this is true; he’d always had a sense of Steve, always known when he was in trouble (which is to say: pretty much whenever he was out of Bucky’s sight).

Later, he thinks of Steve. He thinks of Steve and wonders where he is, and if he’s ok, and after a moment, he feels a strange sense of surprise, like it’s coming from outside himself, like it isn’t his surprise. After that, a warmth floods him, and he falls asleep that evening with it still flowing through his veins.

\----

Steve takes the Red line, which is somehow miraculously running on time and isn’t single tracking _anywhere_ , and walks the last couple of blocks back to his place. He’s not sure exactly what he’s going to do, but he knows that Bucky knows where his apartment is, and he wants to make sure that he’ll know Steve is thinking of him, is worried about him. 

He doesn’t want to push, though. As desperate as he is to have Bucky back at his side, to assuage the ache that still sits in his chest like a weight, he doesn’t want to make Bucky do anything he doesn’t want to do; Bucky’s had enough of that, enough of people taking his choices away from him.

Steve only knows the barest hint of what that’s like, and he would never impose something like that on Bucky.

He stands in his living room for a long time, just staring at the hole in the wall. It’s seriously going to depreciate the value of the apartment, he thinks, and only then does he realize he has no plans on living here again. It’s time for a change. 

DC isn’t where he should be, anymore.

That’s what gets him moving again. He goes to the kitchen first, cleans out the cabinets. He makes a few sandwiches and gathers some fruit and puts it all together in the fridge, along with what’s not starting to go bad of his juice and milk, and he bins the rest of it. 

He eats one of the sandwiches himself, and he leaves the dishes in the sink and goes into his room. He packs up the rest of what he wants for himself, and starts getting together stuff that he thinks Bucky might be able to wear, or would fit. Some track pants, t-shirts, a couple of sweatshirts. A pair of jeans that he thinks might fit? He hadn’t really been looking at his soulmate with an eye towards sizes, the last time he’d seen him.

The last time he’d seen Bucky, Steve had been high as a kite on painkillers, and it was dark, and Bucky seemed swathed in shadow as much as clothing, but maybe he was wearing a hoodie? And jeans? 

Steve doesn’t really know.

He looks critically at his little pile of clothing, and thinks: t-shirts, underwear, socks. Things any man needs. 

He texts Sam, ‘running to Target real quick, gonna be a little later.’

Sam texts him back, ‘Target is dangerous man. Take a list.’

It takes Steve a minute to realize that the danger of Target is not the danger he’s used to.

It’s only about two miles from his place to the nearest Target, so Steve forgoes the metro and walks; it takes him about half the time the subway would. It gives him time to get himself psyched up for it, too. He still finds Target slightly overwhelming. It’s so bright, and there’s just so much stuff. Not that he’d never been in a department store before, when he was growing up, but it was a pretty rare occurrence, what with how little money they always had, but he’s been to Macy’s, he’d been to the old department store in Brooklyn that he can’t quite recall the name of. Target is different.

Target _is_ dangerous, but he perseveres and leaves with only the socks and underwear and t-shirts he’d intended, a simple but well-stocked first aid kit, several boxes of granola and protein bars (he doesn’t really like protein bars himself, but they’ll do in a pinch, and he suspects Bucky’s metabolism is a lot like his now), two sweatshirts, and a hat. 

He walks back to his place and packs up all the new stuff along with the things he’d already gathered. He gets some cash, and leaves that too, just in case. He doesn’t want Bucky to have no way around. He debates trying to find a phone, so Bucky has some form of communication, so he can maybe call, but he thinks this might be tempting fate. It might be too much, and he might end up too disappointed if Bucky doesn’t call.

He’s tempted to leave the keys to his bike, but he decides against that, too.

He casts around in the apartment for a few minutes, echoing and feeling empty just like always, trying to decide if he should leave anything else. Steve ends up in his room, and that’s when he catches sight of his sketchbooks, on the nightstand next to his bed. 

He grabs both of them, the one that’s nearly full as well as the new one that he hasn’t started yet, and goes back into the living room, sitting down on the couch and opening the almost full one.

Steve thinks for a few minutes, and then he starts to write.

_Bucky,  
I don’t know how much you remember right now, but I want you to know that I’m your friend. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I’d like to know you’re safe, if you can let me know somehow?_

_I put together some stuff for you. I hope it all fits. There are sandwiches and fruit in the fridge, please help yourself to them. There’s some money, and clothes and some protein bars in here as well._

_I hope you’re safe. I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re eating and have somewhere to sleep. I’m going to look for you, but I understand if you’re not ready to be found yet._

_I want you to know that I remember you coming to see me in the hospital. And I meant what I said. I’m yours.  
Steve_

He stares at his words for a few minutes. It doesn’t feel like enough, but it will have to do. He desperately wants to ask Bucky to come home, but he won’t force anything on him. He can’t, no matter how desperate he is.

Steve doodles while he thinks, in the bottom corner of the page, and it ends up being a little version of him in the hospital bed, looking like he used to, before the serum, the way he still feels most of the time, with Bucky standing at the end of the bed watching him, arms crossed and glaring. His arm is metal, and Steve doesn’t know why he draws them with such contrast, Steve the way he used to be, and Bucky the way he is. But he leaves it, and then he writes in the corner, _Feel free to keep this sketchbook._

Steve leaves the sketchbook open on top of the duffle bag with all the stuff in it, and he takes the new one with him, locks up the apartment, and he gets on his bike and heads back to Sam’s.


End file.
